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A jam asked his neighbour, a preserve, why he has suddenly become so ugly. “Oh, quite the contrary, my dear jam, look at me carefully, I have the most fashionable little scum in the whole pantry, it is green, its style suits me well, and look how gracefully it is attached to the jar” – answered the preserve. The jam said “I can bet everything that it is not a scum and I will not be misled, dear preserve, what you have is mould. Whatever happened to your soul, where did that ferment come from, have you fallen in love and lost your senses”. These words encouraged the preserve to confess: “Oh yes, you have guessed, my jam, I cannot hide the fact that a certain person has stolen my heart. It is the one opposite of us, that wonderful, ginger preserve. Her cap, cork, sticker, flask, from top to bottom, from bottom to top. And on top of that vanilla, mollases with juice, which makes her inside incredibly tasty. She sent me a sweet kiss, so I lifted my hat for her”. At that moment the sudden fermentation makes the jar explode.
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Ryszard Antoniszczak’s debut film “Goodbye steam!” (1974) was in fact a long video clip to the hit of the „Zdrój Jana” band about an old man with a passion for trains and his emotional and existential reflections. Similarly “How the jam became uglier” (1977) is also a clip to this band’s song. Zdrój Jana began its existence in 1965, when Julian Józef Antoniszczak, Ryszard’s older brother, later a wonderful director of non camera animated films, and his friend Franciszek Miecznikowski create the literary-big beat cabaret “Zdrój Jana” at the Academy of Arts in Cracow. A year later Ryszard Antoniszczak, Julian’s younger brother, joined the cabaret along with Jacek Ukleja (a visual artist, close associate of Ryszard Antoniszczak), turning it into a rock band. It was untypical, because it lay emphasis on literature and visuals. They played music which was precursory in Poland – a combination of psychedelic music inspired by Vanilla Fudge, Byrds and Grateful Dead combined with something which was later called punk rock. For the members of Zdrój Jana music was just as important as the on-stage scenery: lights, theatrical elements, visuals, costumes, stage movement. It made them closer to the performer musical-visual activities of Frank Zappa. Antoniszczak’s debut animation “Goodbye Steam!” refers the poetics, arts and music of the “Yellow submarine” by George Dunning. The same goes for “How the jam became uglier”, it is a film from the same trunk. Jerzy Armata